Save Article

Meth Heads in the White House

Obama plans to regulate methane even as emissions plummet.

Jan. 4, 2015 5:54 p.m. ET

In his last two years in office, President Obama seems determined to leave an environmental legacy by undermining the major reason his economic legacy will be better than it deserves to be: the domestic fossil fuel boom. A surge of new federal regulation is headed for the oil and gas industry, starting as soon as this month with a crackdown on methane.

The Administration is targeting everything from offshore drilling to oil trains but the methane rule is likely to be among the worst. The noncrisis that it will purport to solve...